


Ceaselessly Into the Past

by Duck_Life



Category: Supernatural
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe - 1920s, Cheating, Dancing, Drinking, F/M, Gen, M/M, New York City, Party, The Great Gatsby - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-06-02
Updated: 2013-07-26
Packaged: 2017-12-13 17:23:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 9,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/826862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Duck_Life/pseuds/Duck_Life
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gatsby AU. Stanford graduate Sam has just moved into East Egg, across the Sound from his brother, whom he learns has a history with Sam's eccentric neighbor.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Where the Wind Blows

The house is almost too small to be called that, especially put up against the sprawling estates beside it and across the Long Island Sound, but it’s got a roof and four walls and Sam’s exhausted from the long trip on the train, so he gives it a weary smile and slumbers in, brushing hair out of his eyes that he’s given up on cutting. The immediate foyer carries with it a dry, musty smell of disuse, but he can worry about that later when sleep isn’t his highest priority, when he can add more to his “to do” list like exploring the rest of East Egg and visiting his brother and buying groceries.

For now, it’s enough to just kick his shoes off and crash onto the thin mattress, letting the distant sounds of guests at the neighbor’s house wash over him like the sound of falling rain. Just before his eyes drift shut for good, he catches a glimpse through the high window beside the bed of the neighbor’s balcony, and the silhouette of a solitary man staring across the Sound.

 “Sammy!”

Dean’s exuberant when he comes to the door, grinning and slapping his younger brother on the shoulder and ushering him inside, calling orders over his shoulder for the servants to relieve Sam of his coat and bring drinks to the sunroom. “How’ve you been? How was Stanford?”

“Loud,” Sam admits, getting pulled down a long and vibrantly decorated hallway into a breezy room fluttering with curtains. Dean’s house sits on West Egg, the neighborhood for old money, which, while Dean isn’t, his wife is.

“Sam, good to see you,” she announces now, stepping out from around the couch, the lingering British accent in her voice flavoring her words like strong tea. “We met at the wedding.”

“Right,” he says with a tight smile, shaking her hand. “Bela.” Her hair frames her face in a black bob, making the angles of her face jump out.

“Have you met Sarah Blake?” Bela asks him while cocktails are passed around, pointing to a slender woman with short brown hair by the window. “She’s an art dealer, just got back from Paris.”

“Nice to meet you,” Sam says, stepping forward.

“And you, Mr. Winchester,” she answers with a refined nod that’s somewhat intimidating. “You live in East Egg? I’ve heard it’s sensational.”

Before Sam can open his mouth, Bela jumps in and says with a shake of her bangs, “I think it must be terrible, all those shady houses and wild people- I hear they’re all bootleggers.”

“Well, at least everything’s not covered in six inches of gloss,” Dean cuts her off with a knock on the glossy doorframe, visibly trying to ease the tension. Bela flashes a quick smile of agreement that pales when she looks back at Sam, and he can’t help but wonder if something is _off_ between the two of them.

“Have you met any of your neighbors?” Sarah asks, looking up at Sam, who’s towering a bit in the middle of the room. When he looks back at her to answer, he can _feel_ Dean and Bela watching on with rapt attention, and it occurs to him that it was no coincidence Sarah Blake was at the house when he arrived. It’s almost as if Dean’s back to their grade school days, pushing Sam together with any girl he thinks is right for his little brother.

“Uh, no, not yet,” Sam tells her, though he’s seen them romping on the beach late at night. “I haven’t really had a chance to walk around yet.”

“You must know Mr. Novak,” she counters, and immediately there’s a flustered noise from the doorway where Dean’s stumbled and spilled half of his cocktail down his shirt, staining the lapels of his jacket.

“Novak?” he manages while Bela looks alarmed. “What Novak?”

But before Sam can say anything about the man he’d watched standing alone last night, dinner starts up and the conversation fades into less personal issues like books and weather.

In the middle of the meal, the phone rings from another region of the house, and Dean flinches like he’s been stricken but says nothing, reaching for more salad. “It’s the journalist’s office,” the butler announces, and Bela fidgets with her napkin before tossing it down and standing up.

“Probably Mrs. Armstrong, calling to ask about yesterday’s luncheon,” she says with a wan smile, but it sounds weak. “I’ll be right back.” She disappears into the folds of the house.

After an awkward moment during which Dean wrings his cloth napkin around in his hands like he’s trying to strangle it, he finally pushes the chair back, mumbles some excuse about getting more wine, and follows her in. Sam opens his mouth to speak but Sarah shushes him with a quick flapping of her hand.

“I want to hear,” she whispers, craning her head towards the open door.

“Hear what?” Sam asks, slipping into a whisper as well, his fork hovering over the forgotten pasta.

“Well,” she says, straightening up like she’s imparting valuable wisdom, “I bet you that’s Bela’s man on the phone.”

“Her man?”

“Yes.”

“She’s got a man?” Sam asks, confused. “What do you mean?”

“I mean,” Sarah says between her teeth with the hint of a smile at Sam’s befuddlement, “she’s got a man in the city. A man _not_ her husband.” Sam’s hazel eyes widen marginally. “See?”

“And Dean-”

“Dean likes to pretend he doesn’t know,” Sarah explains conspiratorially. “As for the man, I don’t know his name, just that he writes for the paper.” Shrugging, she sips her wine while Sam looks mortified. “Welcome to West Egg.”

After dinner, which proceeds with a terse silence from Dean and a terse loudness from Bela, Dean tugs on his brother’s jacket sleeve and leads him outside to the freshly cut lawn. Stars scatter across the sky, and a green light at the edge of the Winchesters’ dock flares across the water. Sam almost asks about the phone call but then remembers how much it irritates Dean to talk about matters of emotions and snaps his mouth shut.  

“Have you been picked up at a firm yet?” Dean asks, not finding the eager and inspired law student his brother had been last Christmas in Sam’s weary and aloof expression.

“Not yet,” says Sam, sounding discouraged. “I thought I might take a year off. Try writing.” Though he stiffens a little, as if the thought of writing brings his mind back to the phone call at dinner, Dean smiles, remembering the little books Sammy used to put together out of old newspapers when he was a kid.

“I think you’d be great at it,” he tells Sam, clapping his brother on the shoulder again while music from a distant house gets carried past them with the breeze.

When he gets back home, Sam pauses at his door and turns back, picking out the green light in front of Dean and Bela’s home, and he notices that same man whose silhouette he’d seen the night before, standing at the edge of the dock and reaching out like he can touch the light. 


	2. A Little Party Never Killed Nobody

As it turns out, Bela’s man in the city lives just outside the city, which Sam finds out that weekend when she pulls up outside his house in Dean’s black Chevrolet and announces that she’s taking Sam out. Despite feeling apprehensive about the fact that Dean isn’t coming along, Sam climbs into the passenger’s seat and they head out.

When they start in on the ashy foreground to New York City, Bela turns to Sam, fingers tapping against the steering wheel, and says, “I want you to meet Marv.”

Marv, Sam learns from what Bela says, is a dedicated enough writer but too poor to live inside the actual city. His cramped and dusted house sits at the edge of the road, under the watchful eyes of a dilapidated billboard advertising an eye doctor who must be long gone. “Oh, he was useless,” she comments driving past the advertisement. “Friend of mine- Pamela, she went to him. Didn’t help her at all.”

Bela parks and goes to knock at the front door with a smile that doesn’t dim a watt, even when it’s Mrs. Armstrong who answers the door. Marv’s wife is an elegant, if cold, woman with her hair piled up behind her head. “Hello,” she says with a steely politeness to Bela, warming a bit when she notices Sam. “You must be Mr. Winchester’s brother.”

“Sam,” says Bela, nearly whipping him with her shawl when she turns, “this is Naomi.” There’s a thumping of feet on the stairs, and then a man in the back of the room comes into view. “And her husband, Marv.”

Marv wades through piles of books and floating papers to get to the front door, and he isn’t at all what Sam expected. Mr. Armstrong is short, and older than Bela, not the kind of man to stay out drinking and attend regal parties. While Bela hands a pile of papers to Marv that she claims are accounts of the happenings in West Egg to be put in a society article (but which are more likely instructions to board a train to the city as soon as they leave), Sam starts to think that maybe being a writer isn’t so bad.

In the car, he reels on Bela. “So you’re just- just running around on my brother?” he spits out as they speed across the bridge. He’d meant to sound intimidating but it just comes out meek.

“And you’re just tagging along with me,” she adds conversationally. “Besides, what Dean doesn’t know can’t hurt him.”

“Sarah says he does know,” Sam adds, looking out at the rippling water as the city stacks up in front of them, lights glittering. In response, Bela gives a one-armed shrug.

The apartment they arrive at is small but well-equipped, decorated with fancy rugs and carved wooden furniture. While Bela and Marv reacquaint themselves in the bedroom, Sam waits outside in the living room, tapping his fingers anxiously against his knees and staring at the Yorkie that Marv showed up with. In an effort to ignore the sounds coming through the wall, he wonders at the motivation behind that particular relationship. _She’s after good ink, maybe_ , he thinks. Except it seems unlikely Bela would buy an entire apartment for the two of them if all she wanted was _good ink_.

Bela’s family, the Talbots, went back for decades of making good deals and winning out in the stock market. One of “society’s finest families,” several gossip rings claimed. Bela kept the money flowing in through the trading and selling of certain curio objects, a practice Sarah told him he “shouldn’t look too closely at.”

Sam and Dean, on the other hand, grew up almost penniless in Kansas with their father, their mother having died in a fire when they were young. It seemed they’d both go to work at John’s garage and join the family business, but John’s father, their grandfather, who had vanished mysteriously years before and evidently been found to have been traveling Europe, died and left them a fortune.

It’s times like these, when Bela sidles out of the room with Marv looping a lewd arm around her waist, that Sam wonders if that fortune hadn’t been a curse more than a blessing.

“My sister’s coming,” Marv told Sam as if he’d asked. “And her friends, the Rochés. Thought we’d have something of a party.”At that, Bela grins sloppily and lopes over to a table in the corner to pour out portions of whiskey.

Marv’s sister- and her friends- arrive a few minutes later, waltzing into the room, Miss Armstrong and Mrs. Roché in swirling skirts, Mr. Roché in a pressed powder blue suit. “I’m Anna,” Marv’s sister says to Sam, her cropped red hair beginning to curl in around her face in the steamy New York air.

“Sam,” he tells her as Marv hands him a glass of whiskey. “I just moved in on East Egg.”

It’s enough to rope her right in, and while Mr. and Mrs. Roché (Bela and Marv call them Balthazar and Rachel after the first drink) begin chattering animatedly on the couch across the room, Anna sidles beside Sam on the window bench and presses him for information.

“East Egg,” she says, declining the drink that Bela offers her. “I was at a party there a while back, man called Novak. You know him?”

“He’s my neighbor.”

The “party” picks up after that, the Rochés getting drunker and drunker with Bela and Mr. Armstrong, delving deeper into their shared histories for stories to tell. The room buzzes a bit around Sam as he reaches for another whiskey.

When the rest of their company seems too distracted to care, Sam asks Anna about his sister-in-law and Marv. “Oh, neither of them can _stand_ the person they’re married to,” she tells him, mouth quirked into a mischievous grin. “The trouble is, Mr. Winchester’s a Catholic. Won’t divorce Bela.”

The lie shakes Sam a little- he and Dean didn’t much grow up with any religion at all- but he says nothing. This is Bela’s world, for now, and if he can’t make Dean’s world better, he can at least stand not to disturb Dean’s wife’s, scandalous and vivacious though it may be.

By the end of the evening, the city outside the window has become a spinning spectacle of light and sound with the effect of the whiskey. Sam doesn’t remember how in the morning, but he makes it out of the apartment with Balthazar, who looks a little bored near the end.

The four o’clock train takes him back to Long Island, and he doesn’t see Bela again for a couple of weeks.

 


	3. Bang Bang

The next morning a man in a crisp uniform raps on Sam’s door and delivers a thin blue envelope. Sam tries to scrub sleep out of his eyes to thank the man or ask about the envelope’s origins, but before he can get a word out the butler slinks away through the grass, and he’s left standing in his threshold with a bad hangover and squinting at the scrawled “Cas Novak” on the card in his hand.

At Stanford, the parties tended to be quiet and contained, the drinking minimal, the style conservative, so Sam isn’t at all prepared for the scene he steps onto that night in Novak’s front garden.

The lawn is practically flooded with guests, all shimmering and shining in various states of glitter and satin, the whole place illuminated with sparklers and colorful lights. Music resonates from the orchestra collected at one side of the house, spilling out of the open doors, and as the talking takes up, Novak’s house becomes some sort of melodious cacophony.

“I have an invitation,” Sam has to yell over the din at a man in a suit standing by the steps. The man just smiles encouragingly at him before getting dragged away by a woman in a large feathered dress. After trying the card on two other people, who give him even less inclination, he gives up and tucks it inside his jacket pocket, setting a new goal to find his host.

He has even less luck with this endeavor. No one seems to know where Novak could be, nor do they seem optimistic in Sam’s chances of finding him. Evidently, most if not all of the partygoers just show up every weekend regardless of invitation or acquaintance. Sam’s just beginning to ask a young woman wearing a red dress and an intoxicating perfume when Sarah Blake materializes out of the crowd and beelines toward him.

“Sam!” she says, leaning up towards him to make herself heard. “I thought you might be here, you said you lived next door.” Backing away, she seems to notice the woman he’s beside. “You’ve met Ruby!” They hadn’t actually  _met_  yet, in the most direct definition of the word- they had yet to exchange words. Now, he smiles politely at her.

“I’ve been looking for Mr. Novak,” Sam says to the two of them. “Have either of you-”

“Oh, I don’t think anyone’s seen him,” Sarah shrugs, the silky strap of her dress slipping over a shoulder. “This is the first time I’ve come, and  _I_ haven’t seen him anywhere.”

“Do you know, I hear he killed a man,” Ruby announces with more conviction than she has any right to.

“What man?” Sam says, skeptical.

“Does it matter?” she asks, accepting a glass of champagne from a nearby waiter. “Could have been a businessman, could have been a hot dog salesman. Either way.” Tipping her head back, she downs nearly half of her drink.

After a long moment of standing there awkwardly trying to ignore Ruby’s perfume, Sam feels a tug on his arm and looks down to see Sarah pulling at his elbow. “Come on,” she says in his ear. “Let’s go find that neighbor of yours.”

They cut around knots of guests, Sarah pulling Sam along, his stature giving him the opportunity to peer over the sea of carefully coifed hair. The first snatch of relief he can catch after the drowning roar of the party ends up being the library that he and Sarah duck into, a spacious cavern of books, dusty but well-kept.

“What do you think?” The voice comes from a man they hadn’t noticed, a man settled into a wheelchair in the corner, slightly drunk and stroking his scruffy reddish beard as he looks at the shelves.

“About what?” asks Sam.

“The books, idjit,” says the wheelchair man. “They’re real. I checked. Figuring Novak, thought they’d be cardboard or something, but they’ve got pages and everything.” To prove his point, he carefully extracts a volume from an encyclopedia and holds it up for their inspection. Sarah nods appreciatively, but Sam seems more interested in the man. “Who brought you, anyway?” he asks. “I was brought by a woman called Harvelle. Met her somewhere last night. Most people were brought.”

“I got an invitation,” Sam mutters.

“Feels like I’ve been drunk all week,” the man says, though they hadn’t asked. “Thought it might sober me up to be in a library. Always liked books.” Nodding in agreement, Sam runs a thumb down the spine of a nearby novel. “The books are real,” adds the man drunkenly, as if they hadn’t heard him. Excusing herself politely, Sarah grabs Sam and heads out of the library.

Sam follows Sarah out to the edge of the front balcony, beginning to lose faith in his search for their host. In fact, the whole night’s beginning to look like a waste of time when Sarah budges away from him to get them some champagne.

“Having a good time?” asks a man in a tan suit standing beside him with his hands folded over the stone banister, a glass of champagne in one.

“It’s kind of overwhelming,” Sam tells him honestly. “But good. A good party.”

“I’m glad you think so, old sport,” the man says, turning to smile at him. He’s roughly Sam’s age, maybe a few years older, with mussed black hair and blue eyes crinkled at the edges. He opens his mouth as if to say something else, but then Sarah returns with a drink for Sam and one for herself.

“Finally starting to enjoy yourself?” she says to Sam with a grin, handing him his glass.

“Yes,” he says, turning back to the man in the tan suit. “I’ve been looking for the host, see. I got an invitation-”

“Oh,” the man says, looking somewhat surprised. “You found him.”

“What?”

“I’m the one who planned the night and gave you an invitation,” he clarifies. “I’m Cas Novak.”

Sam’s so startled at first that he can’t get a word out, so Sarah slips in and takes the opportunity to chat animatedly with Novak about a painting she’d seen hanging in his hall. Their host seems delighted with her conversation, possibly because he seems he could be delighted with almost anything. Cas Novak has the air of one who could speak for hours about the particular way a leaf blew on the wind, or the taste of coffee, and be fascinated with every aspect.

“You should come over sometime when it’s not so busy,” Novak says to Sam at one point. “I’m sure you’d love the library.”

“The books are real,” Sam recalls, feeling dumbstruck.

“Of course, old sport,” he says, and then murmurs something to Sarah before pulling her into another room to speak with her privately, leaving Sam standing on the balcony and somewhat unsure of what to do with himself.

Exhausted, he ends up going home before seeing Sarah or Mr. Novak again. Novak, he doesn’t see for another few weeks, other than the glimpses he catches out on the lawn, but Sarah begins spending more time with him, letting the summer draw out into long nights on the beach and days spent walking through town with Sarah calling out names and faces for him.

They’re driving one day (she’s awful behind the wheel, but he grew up with Dean so he’s seen worse lack of caution) when he asks about the conversation she had with Novak at that last party.

“Oh, it’s a fantastic story,” she says with a smile, her eyes flickering over to him while he fervently wishes they would stick to the road. “Absolutely outrageous. But I can’t tell you.” He cocks an eyebrow towards her. “Sorry,” Sarah shrugs. “I’m sworn to secrecy.”

“You couldn’t hint?” he asks with a smile.

“I think you’ll find out soon enough.” The car rattles over a bump in the road and then steadies, carrying on. “Mr. Novak told me he plans to take you out for lunch one day soon.”


	4. Into the Past

For the second time in less than a week, someone pulls up in front of Sam’s house and unprecedentedly invites him into the city. This time, though, it’s Cas Novak, and he can’t help but feel somewhat relieved and oddly excited.

“Good morning, old sport,” he greets Sam, grinning from his perch on his glinting cream-colored car. “Thought we’d go out for an early lunch. There’s someone I want you to meet.”

Sam looks down at the bathrobe and flannels he wandered out in. “I should get dressed.”

“Of course,” Novak says, nodding. “I’ll just… wait here then.”

On the way out of East Egg, Novak’s car skitters around corners and weaves dangerously over the road, so much so that Sam finds himself grabbing at the door handle and unable to concentrate on his neighbor’s words.

“I’m sure you’ve heard a lot about me,” Cas says, his eyes veering dangerously from the road. “Some of it true, some of it not. What do you think?”

“Hm?”

“Of me,” he clarifies as they trundle through the ashy pre-city. “What do you think of me?”

At this point, Sam’s heard many things about Cas Novak, some good, some bad, almost all outrageous. What he  _knows_ , though, the words and actions he’s witnessed for himself, spell out a man generous, exciting, and eager to hide a secret- he just doesn’t know the secret yet. He says, “I think you’re a very good neighbor.”

At that, he grins. The bridge rises up in front of them. “But you must be curious about everything you’ve heard, old sport.”

“I’m damn curious,” he admits, a little surprised at himself. “But… you weren’t talking about it, so I wasn’t asking.” Something in Novak’s blue eyes looks absolutely stunned about the statement, as if privacy and decency are spectacles worth ogling. Not for the first time, Sam wishes he would look at the road.

“God’s honest truth,” Novak promises as they cross onto the bridge, water stretching out below them and cars speeding past and around them. “I had some wealthy relatives out in the Midwest- all dead now, with me as the sole inheritor.” Though Sam nods, something about it sounds rehearsed, untrue. “As for the way I live my life, well…” For a moment, he turns to look out at the Sound reflectively, as if the years of its creation are reflected in his mind, as if he stood by and watched the glaciers sliding through the land and shuffling the soil forward. “You’re having tea with Sarah Blake tomorrow. She’ll explain to you.”

“Can’t you just tell me now?”

“Of course not.” New York City billows up from the ground in front of them. “Now, we’re having lunch.”

The place bustles with activity, men in suits and dancing girls and women bringing drinks and food around. Despite the excitement, the scene rings incredibly different from Sam’s time in the city with Bela and her friends. Whereas that had been a contained catastrophe, yelling and booze and insanity crammed into a tiny apartment, this large room orchestrates an organized environment, something artful. The word “class” comes to Sam’s mind.

“Mr. Winchester,” says Novak, putting a hand on his shoulder to turn him in the direction of a shorter, balding man in a sheer black suit. “Meet Mr. Crowley.”

Crowley has the scrapings of a beard and a hungry glint in his eye. He has to reach up to shake Sam’s hand. “This is the new neighbor?” he says to Cas. His accent is something British, Sam’s not sure. Scottish, maybe.

“Yes, it is,” Novak tells him, and it occurs to Sam that in the past few weeks his entire identity has been stripped down to “Cas Novak’s Neighbor”. It’s not an entirely unpleasant feeling- anonymity can be nice.

“I’ll get us some drinks,” Crowley says, pointing them to a small table and disappearing into the crowd. After a moment of standing there feeling awkward and tall, Sam pulls out a chair for himself while Cas does the same.

“He fixed the World Series.”

“What?”

“The 1919 World Series,” Novak clarifies. “Crowley’s the one who fixed it. Got a lot of people a lot of money, himself included.” Sitting there waiting for Mr. Crowley to return with the scotch, Sam wonders vaguely if his entire life after moving to Long Island really is one long fever dream.

In between one drink and the next, conversations flowing together, Sam turns around only to see Bela, flitting from one table to the next like some vicious social falcon. As she sashays towards him, he wonders why it is she spends so much time in New York, the questions she must get. “Sam!”she calls now, making her way across the crowded room. “Where have you been? Dean’s upset he hasn’t seen you around.”

“Bela, this is Mr. Novak.” At Sam’s invitation, her eyes flick across the man.

“What’re you doing out here, though?” Bela asks Sam, needing to raise her voice above the din. When he tries to explain that he’s been having lunch with Cas Novak, though, he turns to find only an empty space where his neighbor had stood.

“See, the truth is,” Sarah imparts to Sam the next afternoon while they sit in the tea plaza of the local hotel, “Cas Novak bought that big house  _because_  it’s across the Sound from the Winchesters.”

Sam blinks. “Oh?”

“Yes,” she goes on excitedly, “and sometimes you can see him staring at that green light over there almost as if he could swim out to it. He’s got this dream-”

“Sarah,” he stops her, thinking of Bela and her history. “Are you trying to tell me that Novak is in love with my brother’s wife?”

She laughs. “What? Don’t be absurd, he’s in love with your brother.” As soon as she says it, she claps a hand over her mouth, almost as if she’d wanted to draw out the suspense and regrets letting the secret slip. “See, I was walking. One day, years ago, and I saw them sitting together, in Mr. Winchester’s car, completely engrossed in each other. Novak went off to war, you know, and Dean didn’t, ended up marrying Bela Talbot. I didn’t even connect that Cas Novak to your neighbor until the party.”

For lack of anything better to do, Sam swallows a sip of his tea. “Well,” he says slowly. “It’s not  _unheard_  of, I suppose.”

“Very open-minded of you,” she says drily. “But Novak doesn’t want your acceptance, he wants your help.”

“What?”

“He told me,” she says, “that he wants you to invite your brother over for tea one day so that Cas can come and see him.”

“But why?” Sam asks, wondering why someone as rich and popular as Cas Novak would go through so much trouble. People would  _talk_ , of course, but Sam’s got the feeling Novak is the kind of man who could get away with anything, no matter what anyone else thought.

“Well, all these parties,” Sarah goes on. “He throws them for Dean, always hoping he’ll walk in. He hasn’t yet, so Cas is taking matters into his own hands.” Reaching for her tea cup, she amends, “Well, your hands.” Sam nods, feeling his mind scatter into several different directions, wishing Dean had brought this up earlier, knowing why he wouldn’t. “Anyway, as I understand it he’s hoping you’ll invite Dean over tomorrow. And he plans to come over tomorrow morning and dress up your house, make it look nice.”

 

“Ah,” Sam answers, not sure what to say to that. Cas Novak, evidently, has a way of developing entire plans, only letting anyone else know at the very end, and yet making it so everyone else feels fine with it. Good business skills, he thinks, as his tea cup nears empty and his mind spins on about the story behind his brother and Cas Novak. 


	5. Young and Beautiful

Cas corners Sam outside his house. “Good time with Miss Blake, old sport?” he asks, smile wearing a bit thin in contrast to the well-kept jacket draped over his shoulders, the pressed pants stretched over his lanky frame.

“Uh, yes,” he says, smiling in response. “Yes, good time.” The lights from Novak’s house blaze across the lawn, though it doesn’t seem like anyone’s there.

“I was wondering,” Cas says, sounding tentative, “did Sarah ask you-”

“Tea tomorrow?” Sam asks, running a hand through the end of his getting-shaggy hair. “It would be great, Cas. I’ll invite my brother.”

“Not if it would be too much trouble,” he insists, holding up a hand in a warning gesture. “Do you think Dean won’t like tea? It could be something else. Gin?”

“I don’t know that Dean’ll need gin,” Sam answers, beginning to sway towards his small house as the sun disappears over the horizon.

“Oh, I’ll need gin,” Novak says definitively as Sam gives him half a wave and heads up to his house, juggling himself between the conversation with Cas and the promise of home, and a bed. “Listen, old sport, I’ll send someone over to fix up your lawn.”

Pausing, Sam turns back to face his neighbor. “What’s wrong with my lawn?”

“And perhaps we’ll patch up the inside as well, make it look nice,” Cas continues, oblivious to Sam. Shaking his head, Sam turns and disappears across his apparently-in-need-of-attention grass.

That night he calls up Dean and tells him to come over (leaving out, of course, the fact that Dean’s apparent ex-lover turned thriving party-thrower will be there, which seems like too much information over the phone). “And don’t bring Bela,” he adds quickly before hanging up.

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Dean responds, and even over the wire Sam can hear the grin in Dean’s voice.

The next morning Sam makes the greatest attempt he can to ignore all the buzzing and cutting and whacking and snipping going on outside, burying himself in one of the few books he brought from Stanford and waiting for four o’clock to roll around.

When it does, he takes several deep breaths and steps outside, only to be bombarded with Cas Novak and several of his servants trailing behind him, laden with cups, plates, a fine silver teapot, and more pies than Sam’s seen in his entire life.

“Do you think I brought enough pie?” Cas asks solemnly, staring at the mounds of baked goods after the servants depart. Sam says nothing, just widens his eyes and turns toward the door to wait for his brother.

Dean shows up soon enough, his recognizable seven sharp knocks on the door jilting Sam out of his sense of foreboding. “Hello,” he says, sticking his head in before Sam can even go for the doorknob. Standing in the foyer, Sam glances backward for half a second, but Cas has faded back into the sitting room. “Why’d I have to come alone? You’re not in love with me, are you, Sammy?” Chuckling to himself, he strides in and tosses his coat over a chair, walking towards the lavishly decorated tea setup and leaving Sam to shut the door himself.

When he sees the towering spires of pie in the sitting room, Dean’s mouth drops open a bit. “My God,” he manages, and mutters to himself, “You are in love with me.”

“What?” Sam says, walking into the room. “No, that’s from Mr-” Glancing up, he finds that the rooms empty except for himself, his brother, and the pies, with Cas nowhere to be found. “Hang on.” Sweeping through the kitchen and the study, Sam eventually finds Cas standing outside the backdoor, looking up at him with wide blue eyes. “What are you doing out here? Dean’s in there,” he says, pointing.

“It,” Novak says, chewing his bottom lip, “seems my ‘people skills’ are a little ‘rusty.’”

“Alright, just go on in there,” Sam encourages, grabbing him by the elbow when Cas remains motionless and shoving him through the door. Edging in behind him, Sam misses the initial shock that must cross Dean’s face, but not the lingering expression of confusion and mixed wonder, along with something else in the corners of Dean’s eyes that Sam can’t quite make out.

“Cas,” Dean says finally, the word careful in his mouth like he’s reciting poetry, “it’s good to see you again.”

Looking like he might choke on his own tongue, Cas nods, ekes out a quiet “Yes,” and promptly leans against the nearest wall, that which happens to be aging drywall and crumples in upon the impact he puts on it. For a moment, the three of them stand there at a loss for words until Cas shakes bits of plaster off his hand and mutters to Sam, “Sorry I broke your wall.”

“It’s an old wall,” he answers, more concerned about the palpable yet metaphorical wall sprung up between Novak and his brother. At this point, Dean’s taken to staring at the tips of his shoes and Cas looks like he’s wondering how he ended up in Sam’s house in the first place.

Fortunately, a servant appears at that moment and begins passing out the tea, necessitating that they all sit down and busy themselves with depositing sugar and milk as they please, a simple task making their collective silence somewhat less awkward.

“I mean,” says Dean, staring into the swirls of his tea like he could drown himself in it, “I haven’t seen you in years-”

“Five,” Cas says automatically. “Five years, this November.”

Eventually, Sam realizes that they just might speak more at ease if he’s not there, so he makes up an excuse about fixing up something in the kitchen and excuses himself, ignoring Novak’s silent, pleading looks to stay. The man wanted this afternoon with Dean, he thinks, and now he’s got it.

After a few agonizing moments standing in the kitchen, hoping that Dean and Cas aren’t just staring at each other morbidly, Sam finally hears light conversation drifting under the door, something mundane about the weather, which progresses to boating talk, to Novak’s old job on a ship.

Not wanting to eavesdrop, Sam busies himself in the kitchen, setting pots in the sink and wiping the counters clean with an old rag when he finds nothing better to do. He’s just started in on sorting his silverware by size and rate of tarnish when Cas steps through the door, looking much more comfortable, Dean poking out from behind his shoulder.

“I want you and Dean to come over to my house,” he announces, pointing a finger at Dean. “He hasn’t seen it yet.”

“You’re… sure you want me to come?” Sam confirms, because he has no idea thus far whether Cas plans to start up whatever it was he and Dean once had, or whether Dean’s thinking in the same line. All he knows is that he does _not_ want to be there for it.

“Of course, old sport,” Cas answers, stepping forward to let Dean through the doorway.

The tour consists mostly of Cas trying to sound modest while Dean makes a much bigger deal out of the lavish decorations and astounding furnishings in the grand house next door. The expensive phonograph draws the most of his attention, and he spends nearly an hour going over Novak’s vast music collection. The whole time, Sam drags along behind feeling uncomfortable.

In Cas’s bedroom, there’s a large wardrobe with a tan trench coat hanging over one corner of it. It takes Sam somewhat by surprise, and he realizes it’s the only piece of Novak’s clothing he’s ever seen that’s wrinkled. “I wore that,” Cas says while Dean runs a hand along the coat, his words seeming to echo in his own voice, “when I worked on the boat. With… with him.” Sweeping forward, he grabs at the photograph frame on his dresser and shows it to the Winchesters.

Pictured, a much younger Cas grins in the midst of sea spray, arm slung around a shorter man with glinting eyes and a light smirk. “Who’s that?” asks Sam.

“Gabriel,” Cas answers, distantly. “My… my brother.” For just a moment, he seems like a little boy, absurdly, a little boy playing house in this giant mansion, trying to impress the boy from across the water. “He’s dead now,” he explains, setting the picture back down on the dresser-top.

Downstairs, back at the phonograph, Dean fidgets with the records before putting one on, a slow one, spinning lazily beneath the needle. “At all these parties you throw,” he says over his shoulder to Cas, “do you dance?”

“Oh,” says Novak, gazing at his feet. “I haven’t danced in… hell, five years.”

“Well, it’s just like riding a bike,” Dean says, stepping away from the phonograph, stepping toward Cas, reaching his hands out in invitation, and when they start dancing, Sam wishes he were literally anywhere else and begins to severely regret leaving Stanford at all.

“I don’t know how to do that,” Cas murmurs as they sway back and forth, soft music scratching out from the player in the corner. Even as out of place as he feels, though, something about watching the two of them together leaves Sam glad he could make this happen, that he could bring these two together after so much time. He does wonder, however, at the consequences, as he stands there in this grand hall so like a photograph of some distant time. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just want to point out that if nothing is remembered of this fic but "Sorry I broke your wall", I'll be happy.


	6. Together

As time goes by, the less Sam wants to know the details of his brother’s and Novak’s affair, the more he learns about his neighbor’s past.

His name- his real name, before he changed it and moved east- was Castiel Shurley, his father a writer from North Dakota. His mother had run off when he was very young, and Cas Novak had been born the morning he abandoned his gray life on the farm to sail off with his older brother. The name, he tells Sam, he got from a man he’d known who sold ad space- “That billboard, with the glasses? His sale.”

Cas and Gabriel worked together for five years, Gabriel teaching his younger brother the ways of the world, Cas in return taking care of him when he stumbled aboard drunk. The arrangement might have lasted decades longer, except that a foreign woman Gabriel had known once, Kali, joined them on the ship, dragging along with her a history or troubles. Gabriel died a week later.

After that, all the money they’d earned together, Novak’s only fallback, went to Kali in some twisted legal procedure and Cas wound up with nothing.

And yet here he is, thriving in money in this gigantic house, Sam thinks to himself as he climbs the steps to the front door where Bela and two of her associates he doesn’t recognize stand excitedly waiting for Novak.

“Oh, hello, Sam,” his sister-in-law greets him, introducing the scruffy-looking man beside her and his wife as the Lafittes, from Louisiana. At that moment Novak arrives at the door and acts overjoyed at their arrival, but Sam can hear a hint of apprehension as he greets the visitors.

Excitedly, Novak passes around drinks, uneasy when Mr. Lafitte refuses his but powering through. “I believe we’ve met before,” he says, turning to Bela.

“Yes,” she says, a stern voice sounding something like ice. “I believe we did.”

“Two weeks ago,” Cas continues.

“Sam was there,” Bela remembers. Meanwhile Sam’s wishing he were still _there_. Or anywhere but Novak’s porch.

“I know your husband,” Cas says suddenly, and Sam coughs violently into a napkin, but the others, if it seems odd to them, don’t show it.

“Really?” says Bela, and she looks away from him. “Sam, don’t you live around here?”

“Next door.” Mr. and Mrs. Lafitte watch on silence, and Sam ends up drinking much more than he’d planned to.

“We should all come to your next party, Mr. Novak,” Bela suggests. “It’ll be fun.” Across from her, Andrea Lafitte nods on in agreement. They plan and plot to arrive next Saturday night, and at some point as the evening dwindles, Cas announces he’s going to get their coats. When he’s gone, Bela seems aghast. “My God, what a strange man. Where Dean ever met him, I’ll never know. The notions my husband gets at times, the places he wanders off to.” With some difficulty, Sam manages to ignore Bela’s way of referring to Dean like a child or a small dog.

When they’re gone, Sam entertains for half a moment that he could skip that next party altogether. Novak’s wild expression tells him otherwise.

The party that weekend differs hardly at all from every other one, except Bela’s there and Sam’s desire to go home is higher than ever.

Dean doesn’t drink much that night but seems blown away by the night and the lights, the fantastic spectacle of it all. Cas ends up pulling him into a fox-trot on the floor, and it’s sensational and hilarious, two men dancing together, but Sam doesn’t miss the ducked smile on his brother’s face when it’s over.

Bela complains about not knowing anybody, and becomes even more furious when Novak tries to introduce her to people. The whole place is erupting with noise and movement, color and bright lights, and when he’s not with Cas Dean looks tense and irritated. When he _is_ with Cas, Bela looks ready to flip the table she’s sitting at. At any rate, the strain of the underlying tension that night is enough to make Sam long for California.

And then at one point, Cas and Dean drift to the side, to Sam’s yard. “Watch out in the garden,” Dean says to his brother with a hitched grin. “You know, in case there’s a fire, or… an act of God.” And he and Cas cross the shadowed lawn to Sam’s porch, where they sit lightly on a step and just talk, look at each other like they’re trying to drink it all in.

As much as he wants to give them their privacy- and really, he _very much_ wants their privacy to be _private_ \- Sam can’t help glancing back every now and then, seeing something in the set of Dean’s shoulders, in the way Cas’s usual franticness fades away. It’s like they smooth down each other’s rough edges- and Sam knows, Dean’s rough edges are _jagged_. He’s a difficult person, a worried and frayed and complicated person, but it’s something about just being around Cas that makes him just _Dean_.

He’s happier spending half an hour with Cas on someone else’s porch than Sam’s seen him living for four years with Bela in that big house.

When they decide to join the party once again, Sam melds himself into the crowd and winds up at a table with a drunken redhead- someone calls her Abby- who tries unsuccessfully to slump against him. “What’s he do?” Bela asks suddenly from across the table. “Novak. How can he afford to throw these great big parties anyway?”

“I…” Sam says, shifting at Abby’s weight against him and wishing Sarah were here.

“I’ll bet he’s a bootlegger,” she decides. “They always are.”

The party skitters to an end before Sam gets bored enough to ask who “they” are, and Bela marches off to locate her husband. As the guests leave, Novak comes up behind Sam looking mortified.

“He hated it.”

“Of course he didn’t,” Sam says. “He had a great time. I saw him.”

“No, he didn’t like it.” The last of the party-goers leaves, and Cas leans dejectedly against a shrubbery. “He didn’t have a good time.”

“Well…” Sam sighs, but he knows the truth. As long as Dean is married, the simple act of speaking to Cas is despicable, and Dean’s a guilty enough person by nature. Novak wants Dean to cut all ties with Bela, end their marriage, and Sam won’t admit it but he wants it too. He wants his older brother’s life to be a longer version of that half hour on the porch, and he wants the means at getting that to not be so messy. “Just don’t ask too much of him,” Sam says finally, knowing the lengths Dean would go to for the people he loves. “You can’t repeat the past, Cas.”

And Cas, Cas just smiles his mysterious smile. “Can’t repeat the past?” he says in a low voice, looking out at the Sound. “Why, of course you can.”

When he gets home that night, Sam digs up his box of old letters, correspondences he’d kept up at Stanford. He finds one from four years ago, and he pulls it out.

_Sammy-_

_You don’t need to hang onto this letter- hell, you don’t even need to read it. I just need to write it down, just once._

_I’m in love._

_-D_

Months after the letter arrived, Sam received a wedding invitation and assumed the letter had meant Bela. Now, though, he realizes it meant someone else, someone with panicky blue eyes and black hair. 


	7. Kill and Run

It’s late one afternoon, not long after that last party, that Dean shows up at his brother’s house, sweating on the porch and wringing his hands profusely. When Sam opens the door, Dean looks up at him dazedly, almost as if he hadn’t expected him to be home, as if he’d wandered over here and quite forgotten why.

He doesn’t say much while Sam invites him in and offers a drink, just lilts against the wall and knits his fingers together, and when Sam finally manages to ask him why he’s there, he rolls his neck and hefts his shoulders and smudges his feet anxiously against the floor. “Sammy,” he says finally. “I’m in l-”

“Yes, I know,” Sam huffs, not willing to stand there and wait for Dean to stretch the words out into the stagnant silence. “I know how you feel. And I know you’re not going to do anything about it, because you’re Dean Winchester, and this is what you do, you crash into other people and then walk away like-”

And really, he should’ve seen it coming, but Dean’s fist knocks him against the wall. Seeing stars and tasting blood, Sam looks down to see his older brother, furious and forceful, but his jaw’s shaking just a little. “I came over here to tell you I’m leaving Bela,” he says, coming back to himself and looking stunned that he just punched his little brother. “I- it’s not fair. What we have, to her or to me. I just- I don’t know, I wanted to talk to you about it.”

Even as Sam opens his mouth to say something, Dean brushes past him and heads for the door. As he swings it open, Sarah Blake blinks, startled, hand raised to knock. “Dean?”

Maybe he mumbles something in response, but he’s moving too fast for it to register. By the time Sarah collects herself and steps inside, Dean’s taking off in his Chevrolet.

“What happened?” she asks, noticing the blood spotting Sam’s face.

Irritably, he announces, “Well, I went to Stanford. Eight years later, _everybody_ slept with _everybody_.”

Sam never finds out what Dean and Bela speak about that afternoon, but a few hours later they both pull up in front of his house. Even more surprising- Cas is following them in his car. “Come on, old sport,” he calls across the now-immaculate lawn. “We’re going into town.”

And so Sarah and Sam slide into Cas Novak’s car and follow Dean and Bela into the city, something like apprehension steering, because Cas hardly pays attention to the road at all. Novak’s car arrives at the little suite after the Winchesters, and they file up into it, the summer heat drifting along behind them. No one misses the fact that, as soon as he’s inside, Cas is met by Dean going to stand right next to him. Inexplicably, Sam wonders if Bela’s going to shoot someone, despite the fact that he’s never seen her with a gun.

“It’s very hot,” Sam comments, wishing he could evaporate.

“Oh, forget about the heat,” Bela snaps at him, pouring out whiskey with a precision that looks like it took practice. “No one cares about the heat.”

“I-” Cas starts, but the look she gives him shuts him up right away.

“And I _especially_ don’t need to hear what _you_ have to say, Mr. Novak,” she says, and takes a swig of liquor right out of the bottle. “You and my husband. _What_ on earth possessed you to…” Her own anger cuts her off, and she goes back to drinking.

“Dean,” Cas says eventually, voice level enough. There’s an edge to it, though, and edge that Sam thinks he might be the only one who ever hears. “I think we should go.”

“Oh, but we just all got here,” Sarah says, walking Sam to the window. “We’re in New York. We’re all young. We may as well have a good time.” Her words don’t match her tone at all, and the strain in her eyes leaves Sam certain that he’s not the only one wishing the tension in the room would go down a few hundred notches.

At some point, as they sit there stewing in the tawdry heat and the awkward non-conversations, a man in a black suit comes in with crackers and a bucket of ice. As he sets it on the table, Dean launches his voice across the room. “Bela, you didn’t need to involve everyone else in this, alright?”

“I think I did,” she says, waving the whiskey bottle around dangerously. “I think everyone in your life has the right to know about what you and this… this… _bootlegger_ do behind closed doors.” The suited man visibly hurries to set the refreshments up, obviously trying to back out of this personal drama. “You know he lied to you? Novak? I don’t even think that’s his real name.”

“Now,” Cas says, wedging himself between Dean and Bela, but she pounces on him.

“You didn’t tell him, did you?” she says, grinning like a cat. “You didn’t think to impart my husband with the truth about how you made your fortune. Did you?” Cas looks pinned. “Crowley,” Bela declares, waving the name like a victory flag. “He was working with Crowley. Illegally. Bootlegging.”

Like he’s drowning, Cas looks to Sam. “Now, it’s- old sport, you know-”

“And that phrase of yours,” Bela goes on. “‘Old sport’ this and ‘old sport’ that. Just another one of your vulgar colloquialisms?”

“Okay, you want to stop hammering him?” Dean says, turning to Bela, who looks mortified.

A tangled web of insults and untold confessions hangs in the air between the three of them, and finally Sam’s had enough. Really, really enough. “Alright,” he says, holding his hands up. “Everyone _not_ having an affair, in here. Everybody else- _elsewhere._ ”

After a haughty shake of her head and a muffled infuriation, Bela stalks out, stray strands of hair dancing behind her. In her wake, Dean grabs Cas’s hand and they fly out of the room. As dust motes swirl in the air and Sam surveys the mangled remains of their party, the man in the suit shuffles away, apparently just as unfaithful.

By the time Sarah and Sam have made their way to the street level, Novak’s car is gone and Bela’s out there stalking back and forth in front of the building. “Good, you’re here,” she says when she sees them. “I’ve had enough of the city for one day. Haven’t you?”

“God yes,” Sam tells her, but he wishes he could’ve gone back with Cas and Dean. Willfully, he and Sarah load into the black car and head back to Long Island.

It’s dark as they near the Armstrongs’ place, but the house is lit up with police flashlights and highlighted with caution tape, and the lit up ophthalmologist sign in the air. “What happened?” Sam questions as they slow near the scene.

“Hit and run,” the nearest cop explains. “Fancy car, someone said. Came cruisin’ through here. This man in the house, he ran into the road-”

“He what?” Bela sounds like she’s choking.

“Yeah,” the cop goes on, oblivious to her reaction. “What was his name- Armstrong. They slammed into him.” And Bela, in the driver’s seat, she’s gasping and grabbing at the steering wheel like it’s an anchor and there’s a body laid out in the middle of the road, a man Sam met once on a trip into the city. 


End file.
